Measurement of heat transfer coefficients by nuclear magnetic resonance

Abstract We demonstrate an experimental method for the measurement of heat transfer coefficient for a fluid system by magnetic resonance imaging. In this method, the temporal variation of thermally induced nuclear shielding is monitored and the average heat transfer coefficient is measured as a function of fluid velocity. We examine the cases of natural convection and forced convection at fluid velocity up to 0.8 m s−1 . These cases correspond to low dimensionless Biot ( Bi ) number where the heat transfer is limited by thermal convection. We demonstrate the NMR method for two simple geometries, a cylinder and a sphere, to experimentally determine the heat transfer coefficient ( h ) in two NMR imaging and spectroscopy systems through measuring three NMR parameters, the chemical shift, magnetization and spin self diffusion coefficient.